“Our influences are always centered on the Mediterranean, but also Asian and Latin. We love Middle Eastern, we love French food,” she said.

Just don’t come hungry for Italian — the Garcias don’t want to poach business from Buona Terra.

It’s been 15 years since the couple risked their life savings on their first restaurant. Eileen was a veteran of hotel dining operations, including the Four Seasons in New York City, and Jose had trained in kitchens across Chicago, among them Tuscany on Taylor, where the pair met.

“We signed the [Buona Terra] lease on Sept. 9, 2001,” Eileen recalled. “We had a newborn, a 2-year-old and a 5-year-old.”

Though the restaurant business has a reputation for being a brutal grind, it provided the Garcias with a surprising amount of work-life balance, Eileen said.

“We have a lot more freedom to choose our time together,” she said. “Before, I couldn’t pop in with an infant to my husband’s work.”

As their children grew, the couple searched for a more kid-friendly area to raise their family, and landed in Irving Park, right back in Eileen’s childhood home.

While the neighborhood’s spacious yards and tree-lined streets had much to recommend them, “one thing we realized was there was no place to eat in our neighborhood, just like when we owned in Logan Square,” she said.

For the second time, the Garcias decided to fill the gap themselves.

They settled on the pizza idea quickly, but it took ages to find the right location. Unlike with Buona Terra, the couple was intent on buying, not leasing, and knew they would need a one-story building to meet requirements for venting a pizza oven.

The property on Irving Park Road eventually caught their attention. While it checked off their most boxes, the long-vacant storefront was also in need of some major renovations.

“There was a hole in the roof and where we’re sitting was just joists; there was no floor,” Eileen said of a bar stool near the restaurant’s entrance.

“You would have fallen through to the basement,” she said.

Once the building was brought up to code, Eileen turned her attention to the interior design.

She balanced the boxy building’s straight lines with a curvy bar handmade of walnut wood, coated in resin.